Ask-Me-About Forum

[Duane]

Hey Loz,

What's your general rule of thumb that you follow as to how many keywords you use in any given campaign?

I've heard that you should have no more than 25-30 to as much as 500+.

-Duane

[Loz]

Hey Duane,

Great Question. Contrary to what you have heard, is wrong.

The general rule of thumb is to have no more than 7 keywords in any one "ad group" within that campaign, this goes for Adwords, MSN Adcenter & Yahoo! Search Network.

What you also need to do is ensure that the ad campaign is the name of your keyword, and your ad groups are also the main keyword. When you apply the maximum of 7 keywords in that "ad group" make sure they are related.

ie.
Insurance = campaign

Home Insurance quotes = ad group

Keywords in the ad group:
home insurance quotes
home insurance
property insurance
property insurance quotes

and so on. see how they are related?

Your Display URL should be like this:

www.Insurance-Quotes-4u.com/Insurance-Quotes
(always place the keyword after a trailing slash, it improves quality and relevancy score.

Your Destination URL should look like this:
www.insurance-quotes-4u.com/insurance-quotes/home-insurance-quotes.htm

You can also use a tracking link as well, but that tracking url also needs to land on the appropriate page that is related to the keyword that is triggering that ad.

Your ads should look like this.

{Keyword:Craziest Home Insurance Quotes}

(using the {Keyword: } token will replace the default "Craziest Home Insurance Quotes" with the keyword that triggers the ad and one of the above keywords noted will be displayed in the title of your advert)

Description Line 1:
Find Great {KeyWord} Around

Description Line 2:
Free Quotes, Expert Advise In Minutes

(note: when you use the {Keyword} Token, ensure that your keywords bode well with the words you place before or after it to make it legible to those using the search or content network.)

Create no more than 3 adverts, let them run for about 3-7 days to see which ad performs the best. Remove the two that don't, keep them safe in a file somewhere as it will help the creativity later when creating more ads.

Next thing you need to look at are the keywords that perform well, remove the ones that don't because by keeping those there that have a low CTR will also hurt your overall bid price and QS.

Place those non-performing keywords in their own campaign, and repeat the process.

Things that you should also take into consideration are some of the quality score factors, use the following on each of your pages

1) contact us page
2) terms of service page
3) disclaimer page
4) guarantee page
5) privacy policy page
6) home/business phone number
7) home/business postal address
8 ) domain name is registered for more than 3 years, the longer the time expiry the better.

And one last thing...

Set your campaign to about $100-300 a day. Don't worry, there's a method behind this madness
Also set your keyword bids double to what is the normal quote, this will get your adverts shown quickly and if you have all the above factors in place, you'll pay less than any one else, especially in google adwords, google tends to favor advertisers who are not afraid to spend money and will reward them more than those who are tight with their budget... note: you will only pay 1 cent more than the person in position 1, but over time, as your CTR improves, google will reduce the price you pay and STILL keep you in position 1 while the guy in position 2 pays more than you due to a bad QS.

Then after a little while, say, after 7 days or so, reduce your bid costs down in 5-10 cent increments every other day to a more comfortable level.

Hope this helps

[Duane]

The general rule of thumb is to have no more than 7 keywords in any one "ad group" within that campaign, this goes for Adwords, MSN Adcenter & Yahoo! Search Network.

What you also need to do is ensure that the ad campaign is the name of your keyword, and your ad groups are also the main keyword. When you apply the maximum of 7 keywords in that "ad group" make sure they are related.

Could you go into a little more detail as to why the maximum number should be 7?

Is there some logorithm that's used by Google, Yahoo, and MSN that treats adgroups more favorably with no more than 7 keywords?

-Duane

[Loz]

Well, 7 is just a magic number. And yup, the total amount of keywords you have in your ad campaign is apart of their smart pricing algorithm.

The more keywords you have, hurts your "overall average" CTR. The idea is to have a HIGH CTR for EVERY Ad Campaign.
Some of the professionals that I spoke to in regards to Adwords and other networks use one ad that works (after testing), and 1 keyword (after testing) and place the other ads that didn't perform too well with the other keywords that didn't perform too well, then split and peel those into their own campaigns and ad groups until each keyword and ad group were optimized. That's how you get 1-10 cent bids.

When I have the time I'll do a video that explains it.

[Duane]

A video would be great !

[marketiseuk]

To anyone thats reading this, Loz has just given some blinding advice. Spot on Loz and nicely put... How do I know this to be true? Well, to be honest about it and in the true spirit of a caring/sharing forum such as this one, I'm very embarrassed to admit that I've been running successful Adwords campaigns for over 4 years now and only just discovered how much hard cash I've wasted... I was guilty of sitting too close to my PPC clients and delivering on their needs and not paying attention to my landed cost factor... This advice that Loz has just shared has seriously saved me significant piles of cash each month... I'm genuinely blushing here because believe it or not our firm has actually got a very good reputation at what we do! Just goes to show you can never stop learning eh?!

Happy Friday everybody, am off home now to kerb my embarrassment by counting my savings this past month...

[Duane]

Hey Loz,

Thanks for going into such a detailed response, I really appreciate it.

Why do so many "gurus" say have as many targetted keywords in your adgroups as you can?

Are they not in the loop, or are they purposefully misdirecting newbies in order to discourage competition?

Also, doesn't Google allow for 50,000+ keywords for any given account? If the magic number is about 7, then you would need a little over 7,000 adgroups just to make full use of your account, right?

Since their's a magic number of keywords per adgroup... is there a magic number (or limit) of adgroups per campaign... and is there a magic number (or limit) of campaigns per account?

Finally, you mentioned this..

Set your campaign to about $100-300 a day. Don't worry, there's a method behind this madness
Also set your keyword bids double to what is the normal quote, this will get your adverts shown quickly and if you have all the above factors in place, you'll pay less than any one else, especially in google adwords, google tends to favor advertisers who are not afraid to spend money and will reward them more than those who are tight with their budget... note: you will only pay 1 cent more than the person in position 1, but over time, as your CTR improves, google will reduce the price you pay and STILL keep you in position 1 while the guy in position 2 pays more than you due to a bad QS.

Then after a little while, say, after 7 days or so, reduce your bid costs down in 5-10 cent increments every other day to a more comfortable level.

What are the chances that you'll hit your $100-$300 daily budget? There's no way I could even survive for 7 days if I accumulated $700-$2,100 in click costs.

Thanks for your input...

[Loz]

Hey Loz,

Thanks for going into such a detailed response, I really appreciate it.

Why do so many "gurus" say have as many targetted keywords in your adgroups as you can?

Are they not in the loop, or are they purposefully misdirecting newbies in order to discourage competition?

I would put it down to that they are not in the loop, or plainly they just don't know what they are talking about.

Also, doesn't Google allow for 50,000+ keywords for any given account? If the magic number is about 7, then you would need a little over 7,000 adgroups just to make full use of your account, right?

Yup, if you use software like SpeedPPC, it's quite easy to fill your account up in less than 6 hours before you ask for a new one.

Since their's a magic number of keywords per adgroup... is there a magic number (or limit) of adgroups per campaign... and is there a magic number (or limit) of campaigns per account?

Well, the real magic number is "1 keyword" and "1 adgroup per keyword". That's what gives you the high CTR since there aren't any other keywords in that ad group / campaign to offset the overall CTR count.

Finally, you mentioned this..

Set your campaign to about $100-300 a day. Don't worry, there's a method behind this madness
Also set your keyword bids double to what is the normal quote, this will get your adverts shown quickly and if you have all the above factors in place, you'll pay less than any one else, especially in google adwords, google tends to favor advertisers who are not afraid to spend money and will reward them more than those who are tight with their budget... note: you will only pay 1 cent more than the person in position 1, but over time, as your CTR improves, google will reduce the price you pay and STILL keep you in position 1 while the guy in position 2 pays more than you due to a bad QS.

Then after a little while, say, after 7 days or so, reduce your bid costs down in 5-10 cent increments every other day to a more comfortable level.

What are the chances that you'll hit your $100-$300 daily budget? There's no way I could even survive for 7 days if I accumulated $700-$2,100 in click costs.

Thanks for your input...

That all depends on the keywords, if $100-300 a day budget is too high for you, try $20.00, but ensure your keyword bids are at $5.00 to build your high click through rate, then after about 3-7 days reduce it by half, then half again, and again each day.

[Duane]

Hey Loz,

I hope you don't mind my asking, but do you currently have any PPC campaigns in which you have adgroups that have only 1 keyword? If so, what are you finding is the average CTR scores?

[Loz]

my CTR is around 6-50%.